FEMA and a lesson in crisis communications. Not.

ICTs in general 1 Minute

A tragi-comic Reuters story is yet another example of the indubitable idiocy and sheer ineptitude of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the U.S. government’s main disaster-response agency.

The U.S. government’s main disaster-response agency apologized on Friday for having its employees pose as reporters in a hastily called news conference on California’s wildfires that no news organizations attended.No actual reporter attended the news conference in person, agency spokesman Aaron Walker said.The agency had called the briefing with about 15 minutes notice as federal officials headed for southern California to oversee and assist in firefighting and rescue efforts. Reporters were also given a telephone number to listen in on but could not ask questions.But with no reporters on hand and an agency video camera providing a feed carried live by some television networks, FEMA press employees posed the questions for Johnson that included: “Are you happy with FEMA’s response so far?”According to Friday’s Post account, which Walker confirmed, Johnson replied that he was “very happy with FEMA’s response so far.”

In a way, a sobering article in light of all the heady optimism generated at the UN OCHA +5 Symposium that ended today.

Published by Sanjana

An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance. I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002. I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents. Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs. Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts. I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.

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2 thoughts on “FEMA and a lesson in crisis communications. Not.”

  1. Pingback: Communications links for Oct. 28th « The Essential Communicator
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